Mexican Beauty Queen Was Used As 'A Human Shield' In A Drug Gang Shootout

They are tall and slender beauty queens who sometimes fall into
the arms of rich and ruthless Mexican drug traffickers.

Some have gone from the glorifying catwalk to the humiliating
perp walk. But for Maria Susana Flores Gamez, Woman of Sinaloa
2012, it was a case of fatal attraction.

The 22-year-old brunette was killed in a gunfight between a
suspected drug gang and soldiers in the northwestern state of
Sinaloa last weekend.

Flores was riding in a car with suspected gang members, including
her boyfriend, when the group engaged in a running gun battle
with troops.

Four civilians, including Flores, and a soldier were killed in
the shootout.

The troops reported that the model had come out of the car with a
weapon in her hand but that she appeared to have been used as "a
human shield," according to an official in the prosecutor's
office.

Authorities suspect that the group was a cell working for the
powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman,
Mexico's most wanted man, himself married to a beauty queen.

People in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, claim to have the
most beautiful women of Mexico, reputed to be tall women with
tough characters.

But some end up in relationships with drug traffickers who lavish
them with expensive designer clothes, high heels and diamonds.

Gangsters "always want to be accompanied by beautiful women, and
they transform them to their taste with plastic surgery," Elmer
Mendoza, a Sinaloa native who writes novels about drug cartels,
told AFP.

In 2007, six years after he escaped from jail in a laundry
basket, Guzman married 18-year-old Emma Coronel Aispuro, whom he
helped win a pageant at a local fair in the neighboring state of
Durango.

Coronel reportedly gave birth to twin girls in California in
August 2011 but was not arrested.

The case of Laura Zuniga, the winner of the Nuestra Belleza
Sinaloa pageant in 2008, inspired the 2011 film "Miss Bala"
("Miss Bullet"), the story of an aspiring beauty queen who is
forced into the shady world of drug gangs.

In real life, Zuniga was arrested in December 2008 in the western
state of Jalisco along with seven suspected Juarez cartel
members. She was later exonerated.

In 2011, Colombian model Juliana Sossa Toro was detained along
with her boyfriend, suspected Mexican drug trafficker Jose Jorge
Balderas, in Mexico City. She was later released.

Balderas was accused of shooting former Paraguay football player
Salvador Cabanas in a Mexico City bar in 2010.

The nexus between Sinaloa's beautiful women and powerful
gangsters dates back decades.

In one of the oldest cases, Kenya Kemmermand Bastidas, "Senorita
Sinaloa 1958," was found dead in Sicily six years after winning
the pageant. She was married to Vittorio Giancana, the nephew of
an Italian-American mafia capo.

Three years later, Arellano was arrested and sent to a
maximum-security prison. He was released in 2008.

Jose Carlos Ceniceros, co-author of the book "Las Jefas del
Narco" ("The Women Narco Chiefs"), said the dangerous world of
drug trafficking can be a potent attraction to women with little
economic opportunities.

"It's not only about money. It's also about power," he said.
"There are female hitmen, for example, who may not be as pretty
as the pageant contestants."

"They get used to a life of luxury and take risks, assuming they
will die soon, but they want that fleeting moment of glory."